Improvisations in tactics were now and then made necessary by unusual conditions of terrain, weather or enemy action. But on the whole the Marines saved themselves in the Reservoir campaign by the application of sound military tactics. In the doing they demonstrated repeatedly that the rear makes as good a front as any other for the militarily skilled and stout-hearted, and that a unit is not beaten merely because it is surrounded by a more numerous enemy.
Inevitably the Marine campaign has been compared to that classic of all military breakouts—the march of the immortal Ten Thousand which is the subject of Xenophon’s Anabasis. Stranded in the hostile Persian Empire in the year 401 B. C., these Greek mercenaries cut their way to safety through Asiatic hordes. The following description of the tactics used by Xenophon and his lieutenant Cherisophus to overcome road blocks in mountain country will have a familiar ring to Marine veterans of the Reservoir:
The enemy, by keeping up a continuous battle and occupying in advance every narrow place, obstructed passage after passage. Accordingly, whenever the van was obstructed, Xenophon, from behind, made a dash up the hills and broke the barricade, and freed the vanguard by endeavoring to get above the obstructing enemy. Whenever the rear was the point attacked, Cherisophus, in the same way, made a detour, and by endeavoring to mount higher than the barricaders, freed the passage for the rear rank; and in this way, turn and turn about, they rescued each other, and paid unflinching attention to their mutual needs.[660]
[660] Xenophon, The Anabasis of Cyrus, Henry C. Dakyns, trans., in F. R. B. Godolphin, The Greek Historians, (2 vols., New York, 1942), II, 297–298.
Spears and arrows have been superseded by bazookas and machine guns, but the basic infantry tactics of the Reservoir breakout were essentially those which served Xenophon and the Ten Thousand more than 33 centuries ago. Organization, combat, training, spirit, and discipline enabled the Marines, like the Hellenes before them, to overcome numerical odds and fight their way over Asiatic mountain roads to the sea.
The over-all strategic effects of the Reservoir campaign, as summarized by the Marine Corps Board Study, were as follows:
1. Played a prominent part ... in enabling X Corps, a considerable segment of the total UN forces in Korea, to be withdrawn from Hungnam as a combat effective force available for employment with the Eighth Army in South Korea at a time when that Army was retreating and was in critical need of a reinforcement.
2. Were largely responsible for preventing reinforcement of CCF forces on Eighth Army front by 12 divisions during a period when such reinforcement might have meant to Eighth Army the difference between maintaining a foothold in Korea or forced evacuation therefrom, by being instrumental in rendering 9th CCF Army Group, a force of three corps of four divisions each, militarily noneffective for a minimum period of three months.
That the breakout of the 1st Marine Division had affected American political and military policy at the highest levels was the assertion of an editorial in Time. Referring to what it termed the “Great Debate,” in December 1950, as to whether American forces should be withdrawn from Korea, the news-magazine commented:
When the Marines fought their way down to Hungnam through the “unconquerable Chinese hordes,” and embarked for Pusan with their equipment, their wounded, and their prisoners, the war in Asia took on a different look. The news stories, pictures and newsreels of the Hungnam action contributed more to forming U. S. policy than all the words in the “Great Debate.” The nation—and the revitalized Eighth Army—now knows that U. S. fighting men will stay in Korea until a better place and a better opportunity is found to punish Communist aggression.[661]